Yearbook 2017
Northern Macedonia (until 2019 Macedonia). According to Countryaah.com, Macedonia has been without a functioning government since 2015, but in early June, Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev succeeded in forming a government, on behalf of President Gjorge Ivanov. Zaev’s government is backed by 62 of Parliament’s 120 members. In 2015, an eavesdropping scandal had forced away Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski. However, a new election in December, when nationalist VMRO-DPMNE won, did not lead to any government formation. The reason for the unrest in the country is that VMRO-DPMNE’s scarce victory over the Social Democratic SDSM led to unsuccessful attempts to form a government, partly because their former Albanian partners refused. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for frequently used acronyms and abbreviations related to as well as country profile of Macedonia.
Economy
| Inflation rate | 1.40% |
| Unemployment rate | 22.4% |
| Gross domestic product (GDP) | $ 31,030,000,000 |
| GDP growth rate | 0.00% |
| GDP per capita | $ 14,900 |
| GDP by sector | |
| Agriculture | 10.90% |
| Industry | 26.60% |
| Service | 62.50% |
| State budget | |
| Revenue | 2.132 billion |
| Expenditure | 2.167 billion |
| Proportion of the population below the national poverty line | 30.4% |
| Distribution of household income | |
| Top 10% | 32.4 |
| Lower 10% | 2 |
| Industrial production growth rate | 3.10% |
| Investment volume | 21.4% of GDP |
| National debt | 39.30% of GDP |
| Foreign exchange reserves | $ 2,794,000,000 |
| Tourism | 2014 |
| Number of visitors | 425,000 |
| Revenue | $ 298,000,000 |
Protests against the country’s leadership therefore grew during the spring. In March, at least 50,000 people took to the streets of the capital Skopje to protest the proposal for a government coalition between Social Democrats and DUI, a largely Albanian party.
At the end of April, nationalists forcibly entered Parliament in protest at the fact that the Social Democrat-led government had appointed an ethnic Alban president. Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev was lightly injured in the fight that broke out. Because of the incident, President Gjorge Ivanov was forced to invite all political parties to deliberations. EU Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini strongly criticized and urged all parties to “calm and restraint”. “The violence in Parliament is completely unacceptable,” Mogherini wrote in a statement.
In the deadlock that occurred in mid-May, Social Democratic leader Zaev was commissioned to form a sustainable government. This came into place in June.